The fundamentals of all major religions are the foundational religious texts that comprise the body of literature and song associated with their development. These texts contain the principles, values, and beliefs each religion wishes to instill in its followers. Since most of them date centuries or even millennia back in time they often require translation or adaptation to modern times.
Throughout the ages, religious leaders have sought to have the foundational religious texts associated with their religion become relevant to modern society by updating their scriptures with new translations. The intent of these rewritten, updated translations was to bear relevance to worshipers, be contemporary to their times, make more apparent the meaning of time honored foundational religious texts, and allow the religion's followers to have a personal understanding of scripture.
Creating new translations, protected under copyright law, is the manner in which religious leaders have sought to provide religious followers closer comprehension of foundational religious texts. By having multiple translations available for followers to read and choose from, the opportunity for deeper understanding of scriptures increases. The personal understanding and adaptation of foundational religious texts is the challenge of religious leaders worldwide. However, bringing forth understanding and relevance of these scriptures about God through a translation and into an individual's own personal life, has long been the challenge for those involved in religious ministry.
Religion is often defined as a personal or institutionalized system grounded in certain beliefs and worship. In addition, religion is often affiliated with a church, temple, synagogue or other place where people come together to worship. Yet, when polled today, many faithful church-goers and other religious worshipers admit that while they may attend their place of worship regularly, they possess no personal relationship with God. Even more, they often do not know how to identify God working in their lives.
Christianity represents the largest major religion in the world with over 2.1 billion believers. The Islamic religion represents approximately 1.3 billion followers. In addition, non-religious people form the third largest group at approximately 1.1 billion. Non-religious people may claim no religious affiliation, however, they may possess their own personal spiritual or non-spiritual paths.
Anne Graham Lutz—Billy Graham's daughter—has shared that she preaches to those individuals who attend church every time the door is open, but who have no personal relationship with God. While this may sound unusual, studies have shown this mindset to be far more frequent than previously recognized, as Ms. Graham-Lutz acknowledges.
Moreover, in George Barna's latest book Revolution, his research shows time and again that individuals are searching for and acquiring a “close personal relationship with God”. Many of these same individuals may possess no organized religious affiliation. This means that they may not attend organized religious services. Mr. Barna has named this group of non-organized religion individuals, Revolutionaries. These Revolutionaries are positioned to greatly change and impact Christian and other worship groups more than any other movement has during the past 100 years. The result of this revolution is that organized churches and places of worship, associated with a variety of religions, are seeing their membership stagnate or decline. If this trend continues, it will greatly impact the fiscal future of organized religions. Moreover, he impact on society of such groups may be difficult to predict, as they do not represent an evolution from developed and proven ethical systems.
Despite the stagnation in formal traditional religions and decline in formal places of worship, the number of individuals who claim to have a close personal relationship with God is growing by leaps and bounds. Revolutionaries are tithing to causes they believe in, they believe in sharing with those less fortunate, and simultaneously they are helping to shape religious-thought processes. These attitudes represent a major shift in spiritual thoughts for a diverse number of religions throughout the world.